There can be only one!

It’s time for my Friday Fun post, in which I offer nothing more than perhaps an opportunity for some amusement.

All right, well, this week’s ‘Friday Fun’ may only be fun for me, but that’s a risk I’m willing to take!

A few months ago I watched the 1986 cult class Highlander with some friends. I was introducing it to my son, and after we watched it, we sat around late at night talking about it. The most interesting part of that conversation turned out to be this hypothetical – if a remake was made today of this movie, who would we cast in the various roles, especially the Kurgan.

Now, before turning to that question, I’d just like to point out that I find some of the original casting calls fascinating. Let’s think about this for a moment. A movie called Highlander about a semi-immortal Scot casts Christopher Lambert, a Frenchman, to play the title character. Then, to play this character’s ‘mentor’ – another semi-immortal, but in this case, a Spaniard, they cast Sean Connery – a Scot! I like the movie, so I don’t mind, but it seems a little odd.

So, how would you cast the three key roles: the highlander, the Spaniard and the Kurgan? To me, the key question is the Kurgan. Clancy Brown played him originally, and I’m a Clancy Brown fan. He’s probably best known to general movie-goers as Hadley from Shawshank, the Captain of the prison guard. The best I got here is Vin Diesel, because he’s another big dude with a deep, resonant voice. He’s not as tall, so he lacks some of Clancy Brown’s presence, but he’s my choice.

As for the other two, I might do something radical like cast Gerard Butler as the highlander, since you know, he’s actually Scottish. For the Spaniard, I’d make him a Frenchman so I could cast Jean Reno, who is good in everything and I haven’t seen him in anything in a while.

If there are any fans out there, what would you do? It’s not an entirely academic question, as they’ve been thinking about a Highlander reboot for a while. Of course, they’ll probably mess up the casting, but if you were in charge – what would you do?

Joe, despite the obvious ethnic alignment of your choices, I think I might like Bardem as the Kurgan – big guy, impressive voice – and Serbedzija as the Spaniard – older guy, tough mentor type… That would be as nicely nonsensical (ethnically) as the casting calls in the original.